So yeah, 11.04 has way worse problems than bad window button positioning.  You see, they moved from their old boring, functional, customizable “Gnome 2″ GUI to a new one, (ominously) called Unity.  Sure, Gnome is a dumb name, but it works, and it feels kinda like Windows, and I can get to my files and applications as if I were, you know, sitting at an actual computer.  In that, it performs its primary function well.  Gnome 2 might be boring, and “Gnome” might be a stupid name for anything except a small guy who sits on your lawn, but it was literally the only Linux desktop that really made sense.

The problem came when Gnome version 3 came out, and it was radically and awe-fully different than the reliable, computer-like Gnome 2.  This apparently drove the people behind Ubuntu so crazy that they were inspired to created something to compete with Gnome 3 (and KDE 4, that other Linux GUI overreach) in the category of awfulness.  So, in the bowels of Mount Doom, a GUI named Unity was forged.

What wrong with Unity, you ask?  Well:

1) It has a dock, a la OS X, that doesn’t do anything you want it to.  First of all, it’s on the left side, where Ubuntu apparently puts everything now.  You can’t move it from the left side, either.  Also, it’s default behavior is to hide behind open windows until you hold your mouse at the left edge of the screen for almost a second.  But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself…

1)  There is no bar at the bottom that holds your open application windows.  There is no way to GET a bar at the bottom that holds your application windows.  Because reclaiming that half-inch of real estate at the bottom of you monitor screen is more important than being able to switch between application windows in one click.  You see, with the combo of the hidden Dock of Death on the left side and the lack of a way to click on open windows, there is no way to go from window to window via mouse.  You have to move your mouse to the left side of the screen, wait for the Dock of Death to reappear, then click on the application you want to switch to.  And if that application happens to have more than one window open (like if you were –gasp — trying to edit two spreadsheets at the same time), then you have to click one more time on the actual window you want to see.  And you have to do that every time you switch windows.

2) There is no actual menu in Unity, and no way to get one.  I want to be very clear on this point:  There is no nested list of installed software to click on (and therefore run) with your mouse.  Now, I understand that some people hate menus, but they’re wrong.  A menu is the single simplest and most efficient way to organize a given computer’s entire set of installed applications.  Period.  If you don’t think so, you’re fooling yourself.  For the makers of Ubuntu, every day is apparently April Fools Day.

3) When you click on what you think is the menu (it’s in the top left corner instead of the bottom left one, but Ubuntu’s been that way for a while now — wait, that’s where it started!), you get what can only be described as the single most frustrating and counter-intuitive thing I’ve seen in a GUI since KDE’s plasma desktop.  Instead of a menu, you are greeted with a giant black window that somehow eats up your whole screen yet shows you virtually nothing.  There are three lists — one for your supposedly “favorite” apps, one for some of your installed apps, and one for random apps you don’t have installed.  There are only 5 of each application listed, with a tiny yet helpful-looking “see more results” to click on for each category.  Clicking on that will give you an alphabetical list of favorite, installed, or random apps, but the list is limited by the fact that only so many giant app icons can fit in the black window (even though it takes up the whole screen).  Let me say that again:  you’re 3 clicks in, and all you’ve managed to do is pull up an alphabetical list of your apps.

Now, there is a “menu” of sorts where you can filter the results by category, but that’s yet another click, and you still might not find what you want (especially if it starts with a “z”).  I found that the most efficient way in Unity of finding apps is searching for their name in the giant search bar at the top of the black Window.  That’s right, I have to f***ing use my keyboard to find my apps.  What is this, DOS 6.0?

I want to make this perfectly clear — I’m the laziest person I know.  This makes me a pretty good judge of efficiency in operating systems and user interfaces, because I can smell unnecessary effort a mile away.  And the last thing I want to do when sitting at my computer is click in a search box, take my hand off the mouse, type in words I have to think about, and hit enter.  If I have to search for something by name, you have failed as a GUI.  You have my apps.  Please give them back.

What they were trying to do is emulate your average smart phone’s screen (with the apps and the black Window), and they failed so miserably that you can hardly recognize what they were aiming for.   My iPhone shows me all my apps on the screen, and I can organize them in whatever way I choose.  Unity does the opposite of that — only showing a few apps, and not allowing me to organize them at all.

4)  It has become apparent that the only reason Ubuntu exists is to sell people on Ubuntu products, such as (the again ominous-sounding) Ubuntu One.  What does One do?  Well, for $3.99 a month you can store a bunch of data in their (presumably totally secure) cloud, and even stream stored music to a variety of devices.  Because using up bandwidth streaming stuff to your smartphone is better than just putting the actual songs on your phone, apparently. That’s why it costs money.

What Ubuntu Inc doesn’t understand is that I use Linux to get away from being sold things by the software that runs my computer.  That’s the whole point of open source and free software, right?

Finally, a serious point:  All the Linux GUIs seem to be hopelessly broken right now, and it’s put the whole idea of Linux in jeopardy, at least for me.  I’m using Linux Mint right now, but there’s talk of them switching to Gnome 3 next year.  Maybe Gnome 3 will improve enough to be usable next year, but I doubt it.  So my choices seem to boil down to:  Using Mint 11 for the next 10 years, or giving up on Linux entirely.  Maybe I should just get a Mac.

We never even thought about copyrights back then, we just freely did what came naturally.  Why?  Because this was the 80′s, and technology had given us a new era where we could watch TV shows later (and fast forward through the commercials).  No longer were we slaves to the networks’ insane scheduling and fascination with USA Baby’s advertising dollars.  We could, in good conscience, get a second shift job somewhere and still be able to see Alf when we got home.  Oh, what a world.  We also broke free from slavery to the record companies by being able to create tapes that combined the good songs from many different artists, rather than having to fast forward past the inevitable “filler” to get to the good stuff.  It was like the impossible-to-copy vinyl of the 70′s never existed, and that was a good thing.  And people wonder why I call the 80′s the greatest decade ever.

This copyright paradise could have lasted forever if not for the advent of the music CD.  All of a sudden, large-scale copying got easy.  And fairly exact.  And Sony had no kickback agreement for CDs, at least at first.  This led to the first of many “Copyright Freakouts” starting in the late 90′s, where record companies banded together illegally (let’s be honest here — the RIAA is a classically illegal monopolistic organization where competition is undermined for the sake of making everyone involved more money) to fight a multi-tentacled attack on their customers.  They sued Napster, a song-sharing program with a centralized database, and won.  They sued Kazaa and other song sharing programs without centralized databases, and still won.  They got William Jefferson Clinton to sign the DMCA, a draconian and blatantly anti-consumer piece of copyright legislation, which pretty much struck the concept of “Fair Use” from US law (unless you happen to be a library, which nobody is).  They sued old ladies and little kids and college students under the DMCA (at $250,000 a song!), and got a bunch of settlements that served to scare file-sharers into purchasing music with money they didn’t have.  Somehow, even after all this rampant suing, their customer base left and never returned.  In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to pretend that anyone who downloads music without paying is a criminal.  That may have engendered some resentment among the youth.  But record execs are obviously smarter than me, so they probably know what would have happened if they just let Napster exist (or take it over), sell ads on it, create a legal site to download high-quality mp3′s (or, even better, develop your own compression scheme like Microsoft did), still sell CD’s to old people, and save ALL THOSE LEGAL COSTS.  They’re right, that probably would have been a disaster.

Today, in 2010, we seem to be turning a corner on copyright.  The Big Companies are winning, mainly by getting former employees installed in government positions.  The DMCA has been unconstitutional for 12 years and isn’t going away.  Fair use is pretty much a thing of the past.  If I rip a CD to my computer, I can be prosecuted as if I were a shoplifter or black-market CD salesmen.  The world has gone insane.  I wonder:  Why even have a constitution if we can’t stop the DMCA?  Why even have a Congress if they’re going to listen to big business instead of their constituents all the time?

I’m being vague and bombastic here, I realize, but this isn’t an essay.  It’s a blog post.  I want to concentrate on the concept of fair use for a second, because it’s important.  If we’re going to have copyright law, we need exceptions to that law.  Copyright law is here to protect creativity; fair use is its necessary counterpart, and is there to protect innovation.  Without fair use, there’s nothing to stop those that create content from controlling every instance and portion of that content to the fullest extent possible.   That may not seem so bad until you realize exactly who we’re dealing with here.  If networks/record companies/movie studios/ book distributors had their way, time-shifting would not be an option unless they deemed it ok — they would want to control the when, where, and how of your television-watching.  Also,  making a backup copy of a song you purchased would not be possible.  If your hard drive crashed, you’d have to purchase the song again.  If someone broke into your car and stole all your CD’s, you wouldn’t be able to make new ones from a backup.  If a husband and wife liked the same CD  and wanted to listen to it in different places at the same time, they would have to purchase a second copy.  I promise you I’m not making this up.  This is what these big companies are aiming for, and in some cases, they have already succeeded.

Which is why we need to come to a societal consensus on fair use.  We can’t just strike it from our society because some people abuse it.  This is art we’re talking about, and if we’re going to experience innovation in art, we’re going to have to protect consumer rights so that people will create new ways of delivering content.  Would P2P technolgies like BitTorrent have been created and explored if not for indifference to copyright?  Oh, wait.  That’s right.  We WERE creating and exploring BitTorrent, but then US ISP’s (already providing terrible service and bandwidth compared to the rest of the world) were strong-armed into “throttling” torrent bandwidth.  Bye-bye, possible innovation.  Hello, terrible data rates and complaining about net neutrality*.

By now you probably see why I’ve been hesitating to write anything on copyright.  It’s a huge diamond of an issue with a crap-ton of facets.  So let’s get back to fair use.  On the one side of the spectrum, you have blatant copyright violations that everyone besides criminals would see as illegal — stuff like making a copy of a DVD and setting up a stand in front of Best Buy selling them for 5 bucks a pop.  That’s obviously bad.  On the other side, you have obviously private stuff that the government has no business making laws about — stuff like lending a DVD set to your cousin so he doesn’t have to purchase the whole thing, recording a tv program so you can watch it later, and backing up the music on your drive to an external drive or an iPod.  In the middle somewhere is making a mix CD for a friend.  There’s a legitimate debate as to where fair use ends.  I don’t mean to suggest that copyright be abolished, just that other rights be seen as just as important.  Keep your laws off my CD collection, Obama.

*  Oddly enough, a chief complainer has been the usually innovation-minded Mark Cuban, who seems to think that net neutrality would tax US bandwidth to the point that it would affect the megabits-per-second of people who aren’t using their bandwidth to play internet games or download P2P files.  If that is true, the solution is not punishing people for using the internet access they’ve paid for, it’s getting ISP’s to pay for infrastructure to alleviate any slowdowns.  What the non-neutralists want is a tiered system where those who use more bandwidth would pay more.  This would stifle any innovation that requires a constantly-working internet connection, because consumers wouldn’t want to pay for it.  It would be a constant boondoggle.  Net Neutrality forces ISPs to provide a fair product for a competitive price.  Bandwidth isn’t a product; nor is it a commodity (though Enron tried to make it one).  It’s just speed of access, that’s all.  Paying more for speed makes sense.  Paying for amount of data transfered does not.  If we’re having trouble transferring data at the promised speeds, then those ISPs need to get some more switches and wires.   This is 2010, for Pete’s sake.  Let’s get some routers up in here.

These Danes are happy.

I’m getting a little tired of having to have a point when I type these blog posts.  I mean, I want to be understood as much as the next guy, but it’s just not worth all this stress of having to reason out arguments and make coherent points.  Sometimes I just want to throw stuff out there and see if it sticks, ok?  Having thus disclaimed my entire blog, let me now proceed to write stuff:

Figure skating is really bad, I think, for America.  Those poor dudes and girls are all being forced to wear funny outfits and give up the prime of their recreational lives so that America’s female audience can be entertained.  The men’s and ladies’ singles competitions strike me as especially odd for some reason.  It’s basically a highly organized form of So You Think You Can Dance On Ice.  The girls are all young and growth-stunted, like they’ve been smoking since birth.  It’s all weird and sketchy.  The guys just look uncomfortable, like they have to constantly convince themselves that ice skating is OK.

Also, and obviously, Ice Dancing is not a sport.  It’s barely a competition.  Are we really giving out Olympic medals to who dances the best?  The ancient Athenians are rolling over in their graves.

The Olympics are just another in a long list of things that US women have ruined, a list which also includes the Lewis & Clark Expedition, elections, and our children.  Of  course, I’m kidding.  It’s just that when I see figure skating it makes me really, really sexist.  I can’t help it.

On a more serious note, I find this whole Disney obsession with princesses disturbing in all sorts of ways.  I feel like I’m the only one noticing that these movies are totally corrupting our kids.  It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone or something.  Children are, after all, our most valuable resource this side of soybeans and corn.  Monsanto owns those things, and now Disney owns our children.  What’s the deal with princesses anyway?  To become a princess, you either have to be born one, or have a Prince marry you.  Both of those things are totally random, but Disney is purposely pretending that they’re not.  And in the real world there are no princes, which means Walt Disney might as well be making movies about unicorns.  You can rest assured that if they did, little girls everywhere would be gluing toilet paper rolls to their heads.  I regard this princess thing as equally strange.

Unrealistic expectations = death.  Did you know that people from Denmark are on average the happiest in the world?  Do you know why?  Because they are content with what they have.  They take their 2% unemployment and semi-comfortable life and are content with it.  Maybe Walt Disney should start making movies about that, instead of trying to turn our children against us with toys and false hopes.  And don’t get me started on Barbie.  Yeesh, that girl is insipid and unstoppable, like Speidi crossed with Hakeem Olajuwon.

You know what else?  I don’t think there really was a secret chord that David played that pleased the Lord.  So that famous song is based on a foundation of wrongness, is what I’m saying.  I don’t really care for music, I guess.   It’s pretty, but so are princesses.  A cold and broken kind of pretty.

Also, I don’t like loud noises.  Bah!  I need some peace and quiet.  Where are my ear plugs?  There’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by ear plugs.

Whew.  That’s better.  Sorry, it’s just that sometimes these things just build up in my heart like that magnetic force in the hatch on LOST, and I have to input the numbers and press the button to release them.  If I don’t, the blast doors in my soul shut and weird-looking runes appear in my head.  I can’t carry the metaphor any farther than that, so goodbye.

I’ve been listening to the new Waterdeep record, “In the Middle of It.”  I don’t know if it’s really an exciting new leap for them or a disappointing new leap for them, both, or neither.  Here’s the deal: Waterdeep is partially responsible for the greatest worship CD of all time (Enter the Worship Circle) and wholly responsible for the greatest Christian song of all time (18 Bullet Holes), so my expectations for them are extremely high.  I’m really not a person who gets all bent out of shape when Christian artists of any sort make things that are not specifically for the Christian subculture — in fact, I generally hate stuff that’s marketed at Christians, and the concept of Christian marketing in general — but it’s a little weird to hear Waterdeep play a hyper-produced record filled solely with songs about people who are dealing with life.  It’s a little weirder to hear them play songs that aren’t necessarily redemptive in nature.  It’s like a switch was flipped and they got all cynical and angry.  That’s not a bad thing, but like I said, it’s just weird.

I figure it’s a by-product of their move to Nashville to become record producers.  The music on In the Middle of It sounds like a production demo reel, which actually makes it a lot more fun to listen to than it would be if they had gone for the same sound as their past records.  Lori’s voice, which has always seemed like an acquired taste, is awesome here, mostly due to production.  They cover so many music genres that it’s obviously meant to say, “See?  We can produce any kind of record you want to make!”  Well, mission accomplished.  The music is fantastic across the board.

The lyrics, like I said, are another matter.  Gone is the redemption and the God who cares and searches; In their place are songs about people who are making bad choices and aren’t able to deal with their emotions.  There are some good lines, but the aversion to redemption makes most of the album kind of disposable.  I just expect to have my block knocked off by Waterdeep, and In the Middle of It didn’t even attempt to slap me in the face.  It’s like they wanted to dig deeper into people’s hearts, and ended up stopping right before the good part.  Not that it’s a bad album.   It’s just weird.  Here’s a lala sample:

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I’ve got another column up on thechristianmanifesto.com.  It’s about American Idol.  Please view it here:

http://www.thechristianmanifesto.com/index.php/2010/02/05/culture-blog-4-gokey/

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If these moderately attractive people are so discouraged with the current economy that they’re giving up the job hunt, what hope do I, an ugly duckling, have?  We are at the worst possible economic situation right now: Employers have all the power, and employees either have to put up with terrible conditions or be let go.  Nobody wants to be jobless in this market right now.  It’s not fun.

In related news, I got a job at Dominos two weeks ago.  I didn’t tell you because I…was busy doing other things.  But suffice to say I enjoy the job very much, and it’s way more profitable than it should be.  For now, I am being blessed at a quantum rate — decent enough job that I don’t hate, living in a great area with great people who haven’t decided to kick me out yet, getting the opportunity to write every day, my car still works, my clothes still fit, and soon I’ll be training for a marathon.

In also related news, Don Miller says I should be positive so I can manipulate somebody into loving me.  He’s seriously morphing into Joel Osteen.  And yes, my sarcastic tone in this paragraph does mean I’m a big fat jerk.  A big fat idealistic jerk.  Sorry.

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Back to jobs.  Obama was right when he said that Americans have a crisis of faith in their government right now.  I mean, I totally do.  It’s not going to get any better if they set out to prove (once again) that they have no idea how to create jobs in our current economy.  I’m convinced that small businesses, long-term thinking, encouraging innovation, and regulating the crap out of banks are the keys.  I don’t know what this makes me politically, so please stop trying to put me in your political box, man.

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I’m done.

Lately, Christmas for me has been a season of great ambivalence and emotional confusion, due to America’s changing virtually overnight into America II: The Squeakwal.  Sorry, couldn’t resist.  The point is, things have changed.  Nobody can say anything about Christmas without everyone else rolling their eyes (myself included), and this has caused Christmas Reductionism, where only the worst parts of USA Christmas survive.  Peace and good will towards men are potentially offensive.  Hot cocoa, generic bells, and shopping are not.  This is where we are.  Even the music has been ruined by overexposure, with every station pumping out Holiday Cheer for the last month-and-a-half of the year, and every public place following suit.  This is why we shouldn’t let America II: The Squeakwal have nice things.

Sufjan Stevens describes in the cute little Christmas story booklet that accompanied his 5-disk 2006 Christmas music box set (which is the gold standard in Christmas Music, as far as I’m concerned) something he calls That Christmas Feeling.  He set out to recapture That Christmas Feeling every year by getting friends together and recording Christmas tunes, and he succeeded, at least for himself.  His Christmases growing up were horrible, and in his adult years he was able to see everything good about Christmas that his younger self couldn’t.  It’s really quite the story; you should buy the 5-cd set and read it, if you get the chance.

I bring up the Sufjan story because I’m the exact opposite of him.  I had GREAT Christmas experiences every year from birth until adulthood.  My parents always gave me great gifts, but in the right amounts and in the right spirit.  They also made a point to explain Jesus and who he was and why we celebrate this American Christmas in the first place.  I understand that most children didn’t have it so good, and now it seems we’re paying the price for that parental failure.   I don’t know if that’s true, but I think it is.  Anyway, at some point they decided that America needed to be ended and reborn as a place where, among other things, the Incarnation should be neither seen nor heard.  I understand why they did it (being as they’re non-Incarnation-believers), but I don’t understand why they still celebrate Christmas, or anything else for that matter.

And this whole Santa Claus thing.  Perhaps the worst thing the America II: The Squeakwal has done is fulfilled the doom-filled prophecies of the radical Anti-Santa movement (which was around during my childhood.  Really.  In fact, I did a satirical speech in high school speech class on why Santa is the Anti-Christ, just to mock them.  Yeah, the other kids didn’t get it).  It turns out Santa really was bad for America.  Who knew?  Without the Santa and the gifts and the doorbusters and the holiday specials featuring puppets, Christmas would have been abandoned as too religious.  Christians would still celebrate it with their families, but That Christmas Feeling would be a vague wistful yearning for childhood and not an overfilled desire for sparkly mammon.

And yes, I’ve had a bad year.  Why do you ask?

If there ever was a time for a Christmas reassessment, it’s 2009.  We have an economic system that’s practically begging us to bring peace and good will towards men back into vogue, to say nothing of the Jesus.  How about being nice to each other for a change?  How about being actually, actively tolerant of other people’s beliefs, looking them in the eye and saying, “I respect you, but here’s why I think you’re wrong”?    How about not being offended by the slightest thing all the time?  How about we gather with family and friends and decide to love them this Christmas season and beyond?  How about we admit that “Happy Holidays,” while functional, reflects poorly on our ability to deal with other people?  How about we give up on those modernism and postmodernism thingys and come up with something that actually works?

I hadn’t planned on this being a treatise on stuff.  But I’m glad it turned out that way.  Merry Christmas, everyone.  I hope you find That Christmas Feeling somewhere.

The answers to all these questions, sadly, is no.  The last one isn’t even true.  I’m not going to watch, but that won’t stop me from disparaging the winners.  Country music might as well be baseball.

11/11 — The most important made-up holiday of the year, perhaps?  No, I’m not talking about Veterans’ Day — that’s real.  I’m talking about s***t mansion day, which only comes once a year and fills us all with good feelings.  I can’t wait for 11/11/11.  I don’t even know what I’m going to call that day yet.  What’s two degrees bigger than a mansion?  The mind boggles.

Feel free to ignore the preceding paragraph.  Back to music: do you remember that kid who really liked Queen, and had an IQ of about 80, and then read Orwell’s 1984?  That’s Muse right now.  The Resistance is pure stupidity wrapped up in big-sounding words, revolutionary jargon, and Queen.  Not everyone should be allowed to read 1984 and apply it to their lives, is what I’m saying.  It’s a fun album, though, even if they think that a vast right-wing conspiracy controls us in every way.  Of course, they may just be exploiting dumb people to make money like so many other politically charged bands out there.  Take the Dixie Chicks, for example — it’s impossible to know how much of the “I’m embarrassed to be from Texas” thing is real, or an act, or just something Natalie Maines said to be popular in front of a London crowd.  The best thing to do (in the case of Muse at least) is to listen to the music and ignore the gibberish.  Because it’s hypnotic, and will make you dumber.

That was pretty harsh.  You might want to go ahead and ignore that previous paragraph, too.  Let me rescue this post with some links I’ll entitle, “Songs you might not have expected Joy Electric to cover.”

That Feist song with the video that looks like an ad for The Gap.  It’s fun because it really sounds like the kind of song Joy E would write.

That ubiquitous song that Coldplay stole from Joe Satriani last year — “Viva La Vida (not Loca)”

Finally, that painfully romantic song from the movie Once, which he covered even though in the movie she leaves him for a piano (at least that’s how I remember it) and in real life the leads recently broke up.  Beware:  This might make you weep.

It’ll be interesting to see if these links work after I post this.

]]> http://epthnation.com/i-forgot-about-music/feed/ 0 http://epthnation.com/sentiments-i-dont-want-to-hear-in-the-wake-of-michael-jacksons-death/ http://epthnation.com/sentiments-i-dont-want-to-hear-in-the-wake-of-michael-jacksons-death/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:12:18 +0000 epthnation http://epthnation.com/?p=1446 Continue reading →]]> 1)  “I only wish Michael would have been here to see these tributes.  The media (and America) rejected Michael, and that’s horrible.  We should be ashamed of all these celebrations.”

First of all, if there was ever a man who did himself in, it was Michael Jackson.  He had more money than anyone else in entertainment, and used it to…well, I’m not going to recount everything he decided to spend his money on, because we’ve all heard the stories.  For example, he tried to purchase the bones of the Elephant Man.  He did this after leaking the story to the press, and then denied it afterwards.  This is post-superstardom MJ in a nutshell:  Confusing, weird, and just a little bit evil.

Second of all, NOBODY accused of pedophelia is EVER forgiven by America or the Media.  Why should Michael Jackson be any different from the dentists and rabbis who Chris Hansen so vexes on To Catch a Predator?  Even if he didn’t molest kids, it sure looked like he did.  I mean, he had an elaborate system of alarms on his ranch to make sure that nobody could ever sneak up on him when he was alone with boys.  You don’t do that unless you’re hiding something.  Of course, we may never know what that something was — it’s either pedophilia, or something else weird enough to ruin his already sketchy reputation.  Either way, Al Sharpton expressing (fake and grandstanding-related) sadness over our treatment of the man — after we gave him all that money and he repaid us with a steady stream of antisocial behavior, lies, isolation, and increasingly crappy music — is more than a little ludicrous.  We didn’t move to the UAE, he did.

2) “How can you people be celebrating the life of a pedophile?  We should be ashamed of all these celebrations.”

Michael Jackson, before he sat out on the counter too long and got weird, was maybe the most talented entertainer in the history of music.  Those kind of people get celebrated, no matter what they do later in life.  As much as we can’t forgive a pedophile (even one who was found not guilty, then paid hush money to those who brought the charges against him), we can’t forget the best selling album in the history of the world.  Not only that, but people over 40 or so remember Michael as this sweet hypertalented little kid who was the star of the Jackson 5.  It’s only natural that people would remember how his music touched their lives.  It doesn’t mean that America is suddenly unconcerned with pedophilia (although at the rate things are going, that domino might be falling here pretty soon), it means the MJ was singularly awesome.

3) “As an African-American, I love Michael Jackson.  He was one of us.  He made it possible for us to be on MTV.”

It feels a little weird to say because I’m a white guy, but wasn’t the whole deal with latter-day Michael that he wanted to transcend race and gender and age and any other sort of label?  Wasn’t that what “Black or White” was about?   Is this (probably admirable) goal of his appreciated and endorsed by the average African-American?  Or is it conveniently forgotten, along with his white “children” and his trial and everything else?

I understand older black americans appreciating Michael Jackson absolutely exploding any remaining racial barriers to musical success, but why are black 20-somethings so attached to him?  Is it the influence of their parents?  Is it MTV or BET?  I don’t know, but it bothers me.   Unquestioned loyalty in the face of a heck of a lot of questions bothers me.

Michael Jackson is complicated, perhaps more complicated than any other public figure in America.  Can we all agree on that?  Can we all agree to be a little double-minded about the guy, or at least stop grandstanding for only one side?  Thanks.

New findings show that the streams of information provided by social networking sites are too fast for the brain’s “moral compass” to process and could harm young people’s emotional development.

Before the brain can fully digest the anguish and suffering of a story, it is being bombarded by the next news bulletin or the latest Twitter update, according to a University of Southern California study.

“If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,” said researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

Yeah, that’s why young people are immoral. It’s because they are getting their news in tiny little snippets and not by reading the newspaper. Because young people have always been “moral” before like five years ago. And why exactly is “moral compass” in quotes anyway? Is it a fake moral compass? Is it because behind the article lies this idea that morality is all in our head, and that we can control it in ourselves and others like a sound board operator messing with levels? How long before “they” try to make us into pod people, anyway? It’s like that Simpsons Halloween episode where Flanders rules the world and everyone is made to act just like him, complete with the “okily-dokilys.”  It’s only a matter of time, people.  The power of science compels us.

See, this is where our giving up on free will and looking to “science” for all our answers to everything just makes us look silly. See what I did there? “Science.” Also, it’s possible that a belief that we’re all just a bunch of highly-evolved animals that got here by clawing our way to the top has contributed to our lack of a “moral compass” or even a “moral thing one gets in a cereal box that vaguely points north.” I mean, I’m no scientist, but it does seem plausible.

To the actual article’s credit, it ends up being more about how TV in particular has (possibly) reduced our capacity to feel slow-burn emotions for others such as compassion and admiration.  It basically goes back over the same argument we’ve heard for 30 years, that seeing so much death on TV has desensitized us to human suffering.  I find it funny that nobody ever judges us humans for being so easy to desensitize, or even for liking those things that desensitize us.  What a convenient “out” for us, no?   And while we’re at it, how come those voices that schizophrenic people hear never tell them to do something productive, worthwhile, or nice?  How come they always want people to destroy other people or themselves?  What is wrong with us, anyway?  Yeah, it’s TV’s fault that we’re unfeeling bastards, just like it’s abstinence-only education’s fault that kids are getting pregnant.  No free will = easy scapegoating.

And if Twitter can deliver news to us without having to be subject to a messy “moral compass,” it’s no wonder people are gravitating to it. Who wants to deal with the moral parts of our brains?  Gosh, I might end up not doing something I want to do, or not purchasing something I think I need, or not punching my enemies in the face.  And the best part?  If you don’t like it, I can blame Twitter.  Think that’ll hold up in court?

The lyrics, by Jerry Herman (feel free to sing these out loud, if you know the tune):

Haul out the holly

See what I mean? Why not “bring” out the holly? How much holly is there, and why is it such a chore to take it out? The very first word is already soaking in cynicism.

Put up the tree before
My spirit falls again

The author is clearly at the end of his rope, so much so that he will fall into a depression if the audience doesn’t do exactly what he says and put a tree up NOW. He’s running out of time before he snaps back to reality, and he knows it. Why a tree? It’s Christmas, silly! Traditional Christmas sentimentality can stave off whatever barbarians are at his psychic gates, if it’s invoked fast enough.

Fill up the stockings,
I may be rushing things but
Deck the halls again now.

What are they filling the stockings with? I hope it’s not coal. It’s probably holly, since they have so much of it. And note that it doesn’t really matter how the halls are decked, or to what degree. What matters is that some crap gets put up immediately so that we can look at it and think of better times.

For we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute
Candles in the window
Carols at the spinet

“Spinet” is one of those Christmas words whose definitions are lost to history, like “yuletide” and “peace on earth.” From context we can infer that it means “door of a beaten-down neighbor.” Also, note again the sense of urgency here, and the series of orders the author has given the audience, who may or may not be as insane as he is. The song was written to be sung by a depression-era lady to her family, but it could just as easily be the commander of a gulag ordering his prisoners around, or Barack Obama’s inauguration speech. Come to think of it, Obama’s inauguration speech might very well end up sounding similar to this song.

It hasn’t snowed a single flurry
But Santa dear we’re in a hurry

Keep in mind that this is a grown person addressing Santa Claus. Also, how many other Christmas songs talk about it NOT snowing? Ok, besides the execrable Tennessee Christmas. Great, now that song’s in my head. Moving on…

So climb down the chimney
Turn on the brightest string of
Lights I’ve ever seen

This part is very confusing. Clearly, the author is beginning to lose it. He starts by continuing to order a fictional character around, then presumably turns back to his family and barks at them some more. If we don’t interpret it that way, we are forced to conclude that he’s telling Santa to grab a string of lights, climb down the chimney, and somehow reach from the chimney into the house and plug the lights in. I don’t think even he’s crazy enough to want lights on inside the chimney, though. Let’s pretend he turns back to his original audience and forgets about Santa, who at this point is stuck in the chimney awaiting further instructions. Santa doesn’t have any gifts this year anyway.

Slice up the fruitcake
It’s time we hung some tinsel
On that evergreen bough

Any Christmas song that mentions fruitcake in a positive way has to have some pathos in it, right? These people live in a world where there’s food that’s worse than fruitcake. What kind of post-apocalyptic hell-hole are we talking about here? (editor’s note: This blogger thinks fruitcake is ok, but isn’t enough of a fan to avoid using it as a punchline) Also, remember: The tree is pain, and the tinsel is gooey Christmas feelings.

For I’ve grown a little leaner
Grown a little colder
Grown a little sadder
Grown a little older

Merry Christmas, everybody. But seriously — how reflective of our time is that fearsome foursome? Or maybe it’s just me. All I know is that I couldn’t believe me ears when I heard this. Was this depressing verse always in this so-called “Christmas carol”? I like how those four terms — leaner, colder, sadder, older — have more than one meaning, depending on the person singing it. Who knew a Christmas song could have depth? I mean, I’ve definitely lost weight this year…and have grown cold and sad in new and exciting ways…and of course, I’ve grown older by definition. But wait, there’s more:

I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder
I need a little Christmas now.

It’s the proverbial “angel on one shoulder” metaphor, with the author pleading to (The audience? Santa? God? Himself?) to replace the angel on his shoulder, the one that tells him to be nice to people and stay out of trouble. He thinks, if we might creatively interpret a bit, that the angel must have been eaten by the devil on his other shoulder at some point during the past year. That, you see, is why he’s depressed, and therefore why he needs to cover up the pain. It’s about regret. Or maybe the author just doesn’t understand the dual-shoulder metaphor, and just wants a guardian angel or something totally lame like that.

For we need a little music
Need a little cocaine laughter
Need a little singing
Ringing through the rafter
And we need a little snappy
“Happy Ever After”
etc etc.

He wants mirth at all costs, darn it — and a cacophony of sounds to cover up the voices in his head. Most of all, he wants something to tell him that it’s going to be ok, even if it isn’t. In our current age, where our economy is based on pyramid schemes and giant companies that don’t care about anyone, I think most of us can empathize with the author and his insanity. Everything that was once nailed down is now up in the air, and we don’t know who to trust. Is it any wonder that some view our President-Elect with a messianic fervor? We need a savior, and we know it, and we’ll therefore place our trust in all sorts of things that cannot possibly save us, on the off-chance they can. Then comes the inevitable disappointment and disillusionment — at least until the next illusion comes along, whether it’s the New Deal or Coca-Cola.

How ironic, then, that this insane messianic desire should be directed at the “Christmas Cheer” and not, you know, the actual Messiah whose birth Christmas celebrates? You know, the one that was born to save us? The one we really need? How are we ever going to find him if we’re so caught up in these fakey phoneys?

APPENDIX: Renditions of this song, as captured on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBBRJs6YCE4 (Mitzi Gaynor, with modified lyrics to make it “more Christmas-y” and therefore, useless. But that Christmas spirit is undercut by the ice skating kids in the background, who are constantly crashing into each other).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PT-3SrIQgM (Lucille Ball, from Mame. She can’t sing, but at least it has the right lyrics. Also, they put tinsel on a person in lieu of a tree).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TO6d7mlJLQ (A high school glee club, from afar. They conveniently skip the whole leaner-colder-sadder-older-angel verse, because it’s not an anti-glee club).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBhqiC9eeoM (It’s not quite to the level of Sonseed, but it’s pretty 80′s. They don’t skip the verse, even though their happy version probably should).

*Please forgive the gratuitous nerd humor. It’s late, and I’m a nerd.

Well, somebody has taken my idea and totally screwed it up.  Meet Guitar Praise.  Man, look at that song list.  I know I’m weird, but is this the most rockin’ collection they could come up with?  Did they really need three (3) Skillet songs?  Did they intentionally pick Petra’s 84th best song, or the Newsboys’ 57th best?  Did they spend all their licensing money on Jesus Freak, and were left with whatever they could license for free?  Are they familiar with the history of Christian music, I mean at all?

This isn’t to disparage the wonderful (I’m sure) artists that are included.  The whole thing just smacks of copyright issues and doing things on the cheap.  Did Tooth n’ Nail not answer their phone calls, or were their rates too expensive?

Taking another look at it, I just can’t figure it out.  Some of the choices are amazing — heroic, if you will.  The Crucified is certainly a gutsy choice of band (though why not Stavesacre, which is The Crucified, but better?).  They went old school with Bride and two (2) songs by Whitecross.  Jennifer fricking Knapp makes an appearance, and nobody in the industry even knows where she is.  They also chose the only DC Talk song appropriate for such a collection (Jesus Freak).  But then they totally whiffed on multiple other songs — the unbelievable three by Skillet, some multiple-song inclusions by newer bands that nobody knows or likes, and extremely questionable choices from some popular bands like Newsboys and Superchick.  It’s just weird.  I mean, if you were going to introduce somebody, lets say a high-school-aged video game player, into Christian rock, wouldn’t you choose a bunch of good, seminal, extremely recognizable songs?  Why wouldn’t Switchfoot be the first band you called?

Looks like I’m going to have to come up with my own Christian version of Guitar Hero.  I’m letting you all know right now that I’m not going to let a little thing like copyright (an invention of man that has no place in the church) get in the way of this thing’s awesomeness.  They’ll just be upright Christian brothers and let me put the songs in, right? This is important enough to be considered a ministry, I think.  Anyway, once I figure out how to program for consoles (we’re getting this thing on Wii, PS3, XBox, Intellivision — you name it), we’ll need to pick those songs.

How ’bout my dear readers?  You got any suggestions?  Maybe someone familiar with what the kids are listening to these days?  Here are my rules:

1)  Nothing against Skillet (I don’t think they suck or anything), but no Skillet.  It’s been done.

2) No Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, etc.  Not even as a joke.  We want this to be less lame.

3)  The songs must actually rock.  I don’t care how great the latest Sara Groves song is, I don’t want to see it.

INSTANT UPDATE:  The CCM magazine website has a web player with all the Guitar Praise songs, and it’s way worse than I realized.  Aside from remembering how cool Foreverandeveretc by The David Crowder Band is, I heard a lot of same-sounding Nu-Rock and decidely non-rocking generic CCM.  Oh, and the Family Force 5 song didn’t suck as much as I expected, and both songs by Kutless were really cool.  But we need some older rock, man.  Kids love rocking out to that stuff.  You don’t see a Guitar Hero: Fall Out Boy Edition out there, do you?  But there are versions featuring Aerosmith and AC/DC.  I’m right, and they’re wrong.  I guess we already knew that.

A few suggestions, off the top of my head:

Cuckoo!  by Neon Horse

Power Tools by Whiteheart

Pied Piper by Petra

anything but Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer, preferably something off This Beautiful Mess

Faith Hope Love by Kings X (can you imagine how fun this would be?)

Shine by Newsboys

The Grace Flood by The O.C. Supertones

Frank Was a Contractor by The W’s

Anyone else?